Up till now, your parents have been a given factor in your existence. Though you may be far away from them and have only intermittent contact, they are still there: - a starting place you can return to; people with a known, (and for better, for worse, sometimes immutable) attitude to you.You may pretend (at worst) not to care about their feelings, but really you do, and deep down you feel their attitude to be also your reference point.
Death changes this. You no longer can go back to them and be at the receiving end of their love and concern. Nor are they any longer an emotional resource or refuge. In the same way you can never set right things that have been wrong, nor ever get that recognition and love from them that maybe was withheld or hidden from you when you were younger.
So now you are forced to look at yourself as you are in isolation, without them in the picture. You have to consider who and what you are, and define yourself on your own terms. Even the choice to see yourself as they did when alive, is a choice you are now making, not one they are forcing upon you by that certain tone of voice on the telephone, that question they ask, that smile or raised eyebrow. However, even with our parents gone, we still have a future, we still have an identity, we still have a hope. We cannot mourn them forever, we can only take up what they have left us and move on. That way, all their work becomes justified by the way we use our inheritance, by the future we have yet to build.
It is the same way with Serbia. With every day that passes the rearguard action to retain Kosovo as part of the country is being beaten back. There have even been suggestions to change the preamble to the Constitution. With Kosovo gone, what then is Serbia? As when our parents die, Serbia has to redefine itself. And there is a future, there is an identity and there is hope ahead: God's plan to bless this people and make you a blessing to all the nations around you.
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